Transient Travesties

Today, upon driving out of our nation’s capital, I was privy to a series of bizarre and unnatural events. These events took the form of sightings, the kind of inexplicable roadside wonders that make my many hours in the car worthwhile. It’s the cow-shaped shoe store in Texas; the “Greenway Creek RV Park” listed as Exit 32’s sole attraction in West Virginia; the collection of carved wooden beavers in Ontario. This evening, it all began at the Food Mart on Wisconsin Avenue.

Enervated after four days of minimal sleep on a series of couches (some more receptive than others), I was pondering my current emotional state at every red light when I noticed my gas light was on. So I swung into a dingy station with “Food Mart” barely perceptible on its façade. There was nothing remarkable about the building—in fact it was rather tired and worn looking—but the $3.53/gallon gas caught my eye. So I filled my tank and proceeded inside to pay.

The Food Mart was remarkably devoid of food. It was pretty much devoid of everything. It was one room, approximately ten by fifteen feet, occupied by one man behind a makeshift counter. A dilapidated cash register rested disconsolately on the side, and buckets of paint lay askew amidst piles of junk on the floor. Three of the four walls were painted, each a different color—one was tangerine, another cobalt blue, and the last was a dazzling shade of lavender. The final wall, a dingy and uninspiring white, was home to three large black doors, all knob-less, and all closed.


As the man took my money, I began to wonder if this were the site of a future game show, or possibly a brothel owned by a madam who understood the innate appeal of warm paint tones. I asked if there were a bathroom.

“Yes,” the man said, and pointed to the door on the far left. Then he nodded to the second door. “That is man’s,” he said, in well-intentioned but broken English.

I couldn’t contain my curiosity. “And that one?” I asked, pointing to the mysterious third door.

He shook his head and smiled. “That’s for other,” he said. Though I was tempted to ask if he meant other things or other sexes, I decided to let it lie. Instead, I pushed open my own designated door, expecting the worse.

The door swung open to reveal a spacious room bathed in bright white light. The tiles were spotless, a dazzling shade of ivory. A burnished bronze mirror adorned the far wall, ornately carved and larger than my entire body. The counter was spotless, with flecks of chocolate, beige, and cream blended seamlessly into the smooth marble. From the ceiling hung a two-tier chandelier, with dangling crystals of amber and amethyst and quartz. Tendrils of cast iron leaves wound their way around each of the glass candles, and a matching light cast a pale pink glow onto the adjacent wall.

Surrounded by such opulence, I felt suddenly uncomfortable. Was it okay to pee here?

I made a stalwart attempt. Though the commode, gleaming proudly in untarnished porcelain, seemed rather out of place, all was in good working order. It helped that the toilet paper holder had a bright green tag that read, “Try my silent mechanism.” I did. And I heard nothing. So I suppose it worked.

In a state of stupefied bemusement, I continued my journey home, ruminating over how the hell the clearly economically depressed Food Mart had a bathroom straight out of Fannie Mae’s corporate headquarters. I was beleaguered by questions. How did it get there? Was it some kind of fluke? Or did the owners of Food Mart decide that, if they couldn’t have real food and consistent wall colors, they should at least let their customers pee in luxury?

As dusk fell, I continued driving, immersed in deep and troubled thought. That is, until I saw a massive red billboard that jolted me out of my stupor.

BE SURE YOUR SIN

—the sign said, in bold block letters—

WILL FIND YOU OUT.

Oh, shit, I thought. They know.

Suddenly, Food Mart’s incongruous bathroom was totally inconsequential. For the next hour, all I could do was mentally catalogue my recent sins to try and figure out which sin would find me out. And how would it do so? Considering the USPS can’t even find where I live, it didn’t seem likely that my sin was going to succeed in tracking me down—unless that certain sin had GPS. Of course this necessitated an additional catalogue of all the sins that might have GPS capacity. Which sins were mobile? Which were adept with new technology? And which were more like invalids who eat pot roast and watch Matlock reruns?

My mind was still spinning in potentially techno-savvy sins when I saw yet another mind-blowing sign. By this point I was in Pennsylvania, and the billboard was advertising a new waterpark up ahead. An image of an Egyptian bedecked in thick black kohl smiled down at me, inviting me to take the next exit and head on down to “Pharoah’s Phortress.”

Like a flash, my bounty hunter sins didn’t matter anymore. My mind was immediately filled with savory images of extirpation. My mission was now simple: destroy Pharoah’s Phortress by whatever means possible. Or at very least, destroy that sign. As an English major and lover of language, I am ashamed. Ashamed of the people responsible for naming the waterpark. Ashamed of I-476 North for allowing that billboard to tarnish its innocent shoulder. Ashamed of America for producing people who turn to their kids in the backseat after mile number 890 of their cross-country road trip and say, “Hey, doesn’t Pharoah’s Phortress sound like fun?” To which their kids reply, “Yeah, Dad!”—and then go back to drawing crayon pictures of pharoah’s phortresses and king’s kastles and celtic cubmarines.

Now, lest I be misunderstood: it’s not that I don’t approve of alliteration. I can’t get enough of the stuff—hell, as Bree Barton, it’s practically my birthright. But “Pharoah’s Phortress” is a blight on the face of the earth. It is the Eleventh Plague. It makes me want to crawl holeheartedly into a whole. I wish more business owners in charge of creating clever names for their organizations would try their own silent mechanisms, instead of polluting the world with their linguistic abominations.

It also reminds me of the time in college when I titled one of my philosophy papers “Phallacious Freud.”

Dear god. My sin has found me out.